Metropolitan Works launched its new purpose built Centre on 4th February 2009 with an exhibition of exciting new work by leading figures from across the creative industries.

Digital Explorers: Discovery featured work by nine exhibitors. Antony Gormley, Studio Tord Boontje, and Timorous Beasties were joined by Michael Marriott, Committee, Guy Beggs, JAM, Charlotte De Syllas and Smart Geometry; all of whom used Metropolitan Works’ unique range of digital design and production machinery to develop new aesthetics or find fast production solutions.

Antony Gormley made use of digital manufacturing for the first time to cut the master for his figurative sculpture. Previously made by hand, the process would often take up to 3 weeks. Using digital technology was both faster and resulted in a more accurate model. His stunning iron sculpture was CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) Routed from modelling foam, before being cast in iron and finished by hand. The figure was suspended from a beam adjacent to the CNC machine used to create it, within the Centre’s imposing machine hall.

“The idea was to see if the volume of the body could be re-described as a bubble matrix: a tight packing of polyhedral cells that transform anatomy into geometry” Antony Gormley

Studio Tord Boontje designed a pair of stereo speakers crawling with rapid prototyped insects and flowers. As an analogy with music, real flowers and insects were 3D scanned and then digitally sampled, cut, mixed, scaled and re-arranged to create a new piece. The fully functional speakers were then created in stainless steel on the Centre’s Rapid Prototyping machine.

Designers Timorous Beasties are known for their surreal and provocative textiles and wallpapers. This exhibition saw them using a laser cutter for the first time, to etch onto the surfaces of bricks. Several ranges of tessellating patterns were created including ‘Escapeland’ – (scenic) – Windfarm featuring people sat on grassland with a windfarm in the background, and Escapeland (scenic) – Urban Animals, depicting a city scene of foxes, telephone boxes and electricity cables.

Painter Guy Beggs’ revolutionary piece Fallen Leaves was a three dimensional development of a painting inspired by the sight of fragile leaves trapped in a steel grid. Built entirely in nylon Beggs’ work demonstrated the surprisingly delicate effects that can be achieved using Rapid Prototyping technology.

Creative studio JAM produced a piece inspired by the excitement and anticipation of the 2012 Olympic Games. Working with aspiring athletes, JAM asked each individual to put forward meaningful objects integral to their training experience. The selection process resulted in a collaboration with swimmer Daniel Fogg, who brought a training kick board to the project. A 3D scan of the kickboard was then used to carve a larger, more permanent version of the original using cutting edge digital technology. The final piece was seen in a photographic portrait of Daniel Fogg with the oversized kickboard, at the site of the future London games.

‘The Lost Twin Ornaments’ by Committee were a series of sculptures designed to invite reflection upon the nature of the aesthetic produced by digital technologies. A collection of mundane items were arranged into unlikely couples, 3D scanned and then modelled in CAD to create complex, abstract forms that united two disparate items into a single sculpture.

Product designer Michael Marriott maintained his trademark theme of using honest materials by creating a carved wooden stool from a solid block of timber.

SmartGeometry Group a collaboration between some of the world’s leading architectural and engineering practices, including Foster+Partners and Buro Happold, and educational institutions, such as Bath University, promote the emergence of a new generation of digital designers and craftsmen, who are able to exploit the combination of digital and physical media. The group’s interests range from parametric design and scripting to digital manufacturing. A selection from the results of the 2008 Munich SmartGeometry Workshop were exhibited through a set of SLS physical models.

Jeweller Charlotte De Syllas, renowned for her skills in stone carving, used Metropolitan Works’ Water-jet cutter to cut basic shapes from Agate (a type of Chalcedony) which she then painstakingly carved by hand.

For further press information please contact Vicky Creevey on 020 7320 1827 or email press@metropolitanworks.org

To view the press release for this exhibition please click here

Exhibition design by Oscar & Ewan

Photography by Pelle Crepin